“People who resent this will not be happy until the supplemental nutrition assistance program is changed from SNAP into the beans and rice program, or BARP.” -- Arthur Delaney

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren are teaming up on a plan to bring more security to retirees by making it harder for fly-by-night financial advisers to screw their clients for their own personal gain. But why did dozens of Democrats sign a letter opposing this idea?

“This is the biggest thing Obama has done on financial reform since Dodd-Frank. It’s basically the only thing he’s done, but it’s a pretty big deal.” -- Zach Carter

Finally, the 2016 invisible primary continues, and the big winner this week, we are told, is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Of course, this only lasted until the Republican contender compared Wisconsin protesters to Islamic State terrorists. We'll also remind you that it is February of 2015, because sometimes it seems we forget that.

“He beat down a recall election. He’s taken all sorts of fire and all he’s done is impress donors and become a conservative folk hero. Scott Walker is the one guy who doesn’t have to pretend that he took 2012 seriously. Scott Walker is the ‘Bold As Love’ campaign.” -- Jason Linkins

* * *

"So, That Happened" is available on iTunes. We've been working to create an eclectic and informative panel show that's constantly evolving, a show that's as in touch with the top stories of the week as it is with important stories that go underreported. We'll be here on a weekly basis, bringing you the goods.

Never miss an episode: Subscribe to "So, That Happened" on iTunes, and if you like what you hear, please leave a review. We also encourage you to check out other HuffPost Podcasts: HuffPost Comedy's "Too Long; Didn't Listen," the HuffPost Weird News Podcast, HuffPost Politics' "Drinking and Talking," HuffPost Live's "Fine Print" and HuffPost Entertainment's Podcast.

This podcast was edited by Ibrahim Balkhy and engineered by Brad Shannon, with assistance from Christine Conetta and Adriana Usero.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience!]]>How Congress Remade The Economy In Its Own Awful Imagetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-26T16:15:24-05:002015-02-26T17:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/$532.9 million for infringing on three patents owned by a firm that could serve as a textbook definition of a patent troll. Smartflash LLC had essentially claimed to own the idea of selling stuff with smartphones, arguing it was entitled to a share of all iPhone sales as a result.

Apple and plenty of other technology experts see the verdict as absurd. But what the case says about Congress is actually more frightening than its implications for the judicial system.

American lawmakers have spent a decade trying to figure out how to curb lawsuits from patent trolls -- companies that don't make make any products, but make money by suing or threatening to sue companies that do, using poorly defined intellectual property claims to make their case. Patent lawsuits are a drain on innovation -- they discourage the development of new ideas and create major financial hurdles for startups. There are enough vague patents out there that almost anything a new company comes up with could be challenged in court. And even if a startup wins the suit, it has to devote years of time and mountains of legal fees to the process.

Congress has failed to deal with patent trolling for a simple, but often overlooked reason: It is gleefully paralyzed by battles between competing corporate interests. This legislative freeze doesn't break down along partisan lines. When environmentalists face off with oil companies, as they have over the Keystone XL pipeline, it's pretty easy to predict green Democratic support and Republican backing for Big Oil. But when one set of deep-pocketed corporate donors takes on another, the result is a bipartisan fundraising bonanza that accomplishes nothing.

HuffPost covered the surreal struggle over patent reform in a feature piece 3 and 1/2 years ago. You can read the whole thing here, but what follows is a summary for the uninitiated.

In 2011, President Obama signed into law the American Invents Act, a patent reform bill he had long touted as a job-creating juggernaut.

"We can't afford to drag our feet any longer, not at a time when we should be doing everything we can to create good, innovative jobs," Obama said. "We should be encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit anywhere we find it."

The job claims were ridiculous, and in the years since, neither Obama nor any of the overwhelming majority of legislators who voted for the bill have spent much time crowing over all the jobs they created with patent reform.

When the debate over the bill began nearly seven years earlier, lawmakers had been trying to deal with a deluge of lawsuits over software patents and vaguely defined "business method" patents. Inventors seeking these types of patents don't have to haul models into the Patent Office. They don't even have to write any code. A couple of diagrams and a lot of techy-sounding language is often enough to be awarded a patent. Determining what that patent actually covers frequently ends up being decided in court.

Big tech companies, startups and Silicon Valley venture capitalists had initially welcomed a bill to crack down on these patents and the court judgments issued in favor of them. But by the time Obama was celebrating its passage, they'd essentially thrown up their hands.

To figure out who defeated them, one need look no further than a man sharing the stage with Obama at the bill signing ceremony: John Lechleiter, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly & Co., one of the most profitable drug companies in the world.

Big prescription drug companies love aggressive intellectual property standards, because they grant companies long-term monopolies on their products -- allowing them to charge prices far above what a competitive market would bear. In theory, it should have been relatively simple for a bill to distinguish between a vague software patent and patents on the molecular structure for a specific pill. But pharmaceutical firms didn't want to set the legislative precedent that intellectual property rights could be bad for society.

It's easy to see why lobbyists with trade group PhRMA, or the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, were concerned. Once lawmakers started questioning software patents, they might start wondering why the United States is the only country in the world that grants drug patents without regulating drug prices, amplifying consumer costs as much as tenfold. Or why drug companies that piggyback on government-funded research should be eligible for patents. Or whether patents are really promoting the right innovations at all, since pharmaceutical companies have poured money into hair-loss drugs, while shrugging off research into the next generation of antibiotics, or a host of fatal illnesses that afflict the global poor.

Obama's support for a PhRMA-friendly patent bill wasn't surprising. During Obamacare negotiations, the White House cut a deal with drug company lobbyists to support a host of other PhRMA priorities in exchange for the group's Obamacare backing. In the years since, Obama has gone to bat for prescription drug companies both at home and abroad, infuriating public health experts at groups including Doctors Without Borders.

But the seemingly endless struggle over the bill presented a host of fundraising opportunities for Republicans and Democrats alike. Every new patent reform compromise proposal was an opportunity to ask for more money from big tech firms and big drug companies. Congress cashed in year after year as the talks dragged on ... and on ... and on.

PhRMA eventually won the battle. It's always easier to preserve the status quo on Capitol Hill than to actually reform something. But now, the consequences are playing out in the American economy. Big tech companies have largely given up on a public policy solution, and armed themselves with huge arsenals of patents, which they can use to sue or counter-sue firms both large and small. Apple has been particularly aggressive with Samsung, winning judgments worth more than $1 billion over smartphone-related patents that it claims cover even the shape of app icons. Samsung is appealing the judgment, just as Apple is appealing the Smartflash ruling.

Pointless, expensive fights over nothing are now commonplace among major tech firms. Congress, in other words, has remade the American economy in its own awful image.]]>Elizabeth Warren's Next Target Is The Fed's Top Lawyertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-24T16:21:22-05:002015-02-24T16:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
"The Fed’s general counsel -- or anyone at the Fed’s staff -- should not be picking and choosing which rules to enforce based on their personal views," Warren said during a Senate Banking Committee hearing. "So I urge you to carefully review this issue and to assess whether the leadership of the Fed’s staff is on the same page as the Federal Reserve Board [of Governors]."

At Tuesday's hearing, Warren repeatedly asked Yellen if she or the Fed Board of Governors shared the views of their general counsel. Yellen eventually suggested that they did not.

"Do you think that it is appropriate that Mr. Alvarez took public positions that do not evidently reflect the public position of the Fed’s board, especially before an audience that has a direct financial interest in how the Fed enforces its rules?" Warren asked.

Yellen demurred at the question, prompting Warren to ask if the Fed had deliberately delayed the implementation of its swaps push-out rule in order to give bank lobbyists time to advance its outright repeal in Congress.

Warren also highlighted a letter that she and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) recently sent to Alvarez, who was reportedly handling an investigation into a leak about the Fed's confidential monetary policy deliberations from October 2012. The two lawmakers are seeking the results of the investigation. The Fed has never published any information from the inquiry and didn't even acknowledge the leak had occurred until ProPublica filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the central bank.

The Fed's general counsel wields enormous power over regulatory issues, is a key figure in both the drafting and timing of financial regulations, and even influences legislation. During the 2010 fight over a Dodd-Frank provision to audit the Fed, for instance, Alvarez personally called members of Congress, urging them to support a weaker, more limited version of the audit.

The swaps push-out provision that Alvarez criticized in November would have eliminated taxpayer subsidies for trading in risky derivatives, the complex financial contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown. A repeal of the measure was inserted into a must-pass bill to fund the federal government this past December, reinstating the subsidies and sparking a bitter feud within the Democratic Party. About a week later, the Fed announced that it would delay implementing key sections of the Volcker Rule, which bans banks from speculating in securities markets for their own accounts. The delay was widely seen as an internal institutional victory for Alvarez, particularly in light of his November comments.]]>How Democrats Almost Strangled The Obama-Warren Retirement Security Plan In The Cradletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-24T11:05:30-05:002015-02-24T15:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
The administration says Americans lose a combined $17 billion each year through hidden fees and conflicted investment advice. Investment specialists frequently steer investors into financial products that maximize benefits to the advisers or their companies, instead of their clients. To curb this, Obama plans to impose a new "fiduciary duty" on retirement account managers, requiring them to act in the best interests of investors.

"It's about time to do something we should have done long ago -- to end the kickbacks, the free vacations, the fancy cars and the other incentives to sell bad products to unsuspecting customers," Warren added.

Wall Street lobbyists, of course, have opposed such a move for years. But some of the most ardent foes of the pending rule have actually been Obama's fellow Democrats.

The administration first proposed its fiduciary duty rule in 2010, but set it aside after a lobbying blitz from the financial sector. Over the next few years, many Democrats lined up to urge the administration to rethink or delay the low-profile rule, pressure that assisted bank lobbyists' efforts to eliminate it altogether.

In June 2013, dozens of House Democrats, including some of the most progressive members of Congress, signed off on a letter penned by financial industry lobbyist Robert Lewis claiming that the rule would prevent financial firms from offering investment advice to low-income investors and people of color. The letter never laid out why its signatories believed banning financial experts from ripping off their own clients would end up hurting low-income people.

"It doesn't," said Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America. "It just doesn't. But it's a much more compelling argument for Wall Street to make than saying, 'We're making a boatload of money off of these people and we want to keep that going.'"

Sources close to the debate told HuffPost that lawmakers had been concerned the Department of Labor rule would ban all commissions -- payments to investment professionals based on sales volumes for financial products. Lawmakers worried that eliminating all such fees would discourage brokers from serving low-income clients with small account balances. The United Kingdom bans commissions for investment advisers on conflict-of-interest grounds. The letter does not explicitly mention commissions, and consumer protection advocates are understandably concerned about brokers taking commissions to steer their clients into bad investments.

In August 2013, Senate Democrats weighed in, with 10 lawmakers urging the Department of Labor to delay its rule, suggesting that it might conflict with a proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A coalition of consumer groups, including CFA, Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen, quickly sent a letter of their own, calling the claims unfounded.

"The original proposal included no conflict with the federal securities laws," the letter reads. "Nor has any spokesperson for the Department made any statement that even suggests any such conflict."

Three of those senators were unseated in the November 2014 elections. Of those still in Congress, Democratic Sens. Tom Carper (Del.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Mark Warner (Va.) all declined to comment for this article.

"If the Administration’s draft rule isn’t harmonized with the SEC, it could reduce investment options for middle-class families and deny main street investors the opportunity to responsibly prepare for retirement," Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) told HuffPost in a written statement.

"Working folks and their families should be able to get sound financial advice to help them achieve a secure retirement, and that’s what Senator McCaskill will be looking for in any proposed rule," said Sarah Feldman, a spokeswoman for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

"Senator Cardin has spoken with Secretary Perez about the rule, but the senator will be waiting until he sees the full details before commenting," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) spokeswoman Sue Walitsky said.

Through it all, the Obama administration continued to delay the rule. The battle continued into December 2014, when top Democratic budget negotiators nearly accepted a Republican proposal to block the Obama administration from implementing it, until House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) exiled the topic from talks over the so-called cromnibus bill.

The administration has not formally introduced a new rule for public comment, and once it does, it will be months before a final rule is implemented. The Obama team says the ultimate proposal will be more flexible than the 2010 plan, with broader exemptions for some investment planners. But Obama's decision to put political capital behind a new rule has encouraged many financial reform advocates.

"I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America," Giuliani reportedly said during a fundraiser in New York. "He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country."

Issa came to Giuliani's defense on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"The reality is that Rudy has taken our debate -- and I think we should thank him for this part of it -- back to national security, to the key element that the president should be focusing on," Issa said, before carefully parsing Giuliani's words in an effort to soften them. "Rudy Giuliani said he 'didn't believe'. He didn't say the president 'wasn't,' he said he 'didn't believe.' Now the reality is that I do believe that the president believes strongly in America, I just think he views America differently."

Issa also criticized the media for asking Republicans to respond to Giuliani's statements instead of focusing on comments made by Vice President Joe Biden. Though Biden is well-known in Washington for his propensity to gaffe, Issa did not cite any particular "Bidenism."

"If we wanted to get -- get on top of the vice president every time he says something flip and foolish or vulgar, we could have this discussion every Sunday," Issa said.

"Congressman Issa, the vice president may very well be clumsy, but these remarks were hateful," CNN host Gloria Borger responded.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of CNN host Gloria Borger.]]>Lindsey Graham Calls For Republicans To End Immigration Standoff With Obamatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-22T11:07:26-05:002015-02-23T01:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
DHS funding expires on Feb. 27, and the GOP has resisted calls to fund the agency, citing objections to Obama's recent actions making the deportation of undocumented immigrants less of a priority. While those policies must be carried out through DHS, refusing to fund DHS will not actually stop them from being implemented, as the key programs are financed by fees, rather than congressional appropriations.

A federal judge in Texas, however, recently imposed an injunction against implementing the reforms, which would allow millions of undocumented immigrants to continue living in the United States without being harassed by law enforcement.

On ABC's "This Week," Graham said he agreed with the judge's decision, and called on Republicans to support the court case and pass a clean bill to fund DHS.

"I hope Republicans will come together and back the court case, file a friend of the court brief with the court and fund DHS," Graham said. "I am willing and ready to pass a DHS funding bill and let this play out in court. The worst possible outcome for this nation is to defund the Department of Homeland Security given the multiple threats we face to our homeland. And I will not be part of that."

House Republicans have passed a bill to fund DHS, but the bill has almost no chance of enactment, since Obama has already said he would veto it for ending his relaxed immigration programs. Democrats have successfully filibustered the legislation in the Senate.

"I hope my House colleagues will understand that our best bet is to challenge this in court, that if we don't fund the Department of Homeland Security, we'll get blamed as a party and to anyone who is watching the world as it is, I've never seen more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, with more money, with more capability to strike the homeland than today," Graham said.

Graham has supported comprehensive immigration reform in the past, and told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he would seek to "fix immigration rather than yell about it" if he were president. Graham is exploring a 2016 presidential bid.]]>Homeland Security Chief Agrees With Obama's Refusal To Call ISIS 'Radical Islam'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-22T10:11:56-05:002015-02-22T18:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
"In our engagements around the country -- I do a lot of these myself in Muslim communities, Islamic cultural centers -- the thing I hear from leaders in the Muslim community in this country is 'ISIL is attempting to hijack my religion. Our religion is about peace and brotherhood. ISIL is attempting to hijack that from us,'" Johnson told "Fox News Sunday," referring to the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIL or ISIS. "They resent that. Most victims of ISIL are Muslim. It seems to me to refer to ISIL as occupying any part of the Islamic theology is playing on a battlefield that they would like us to be on."

"I think that to call them some form of Islam gives the group more dignity than it deserves," Johnson added.

Johnson's remarks echoed similar comments made by Obama earlier this week. "They are not religious leaders; they are terrorists," the president said at a White House summit on violent extremism. "We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam."

Some conservatives, including several who followed Johnson on "Fox News Sunday," have seized on Obama's comments, insisting that he does not fully understand the motivations of groups like the Islamic State or al Qaeda.

"The American people are justifiably upset with a president who lectures us on the Crusades but is unwilling to call Islamic extremism by name," Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) said on the show.

Other pundits find the entire semantic exercise to be meaningless.

"It is not clear what needs to be done in fighting ISIS," USA Today columnist Kristen Powers told Fox. " I don't think it is an open and shut case. As much as Republicans have been critical of Obama, they haven't given a lot of great ideas other than constantly attacking him [on what to call ISIS]."
]]>So That Happened: Elizabeth Warren Secretly Met People All Over Washingtontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-21T07:30:17-05:002015-02-21T12:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/that happened. This week, the fight over President Barack Obama's immigration policy returns to the halls of Congress, with opponents of the president's executive actions threatening to cease funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Is this a smart idea? Of course not. But we'll talk about it as if it might make sense to someone.

Listen to this week's "So, That Happened" below:

* * *

Some highlights from this week:

"Ultimately the borders aren't going to be open if DHS shuts down. People are not going to be getting on planes without being checked. Immigration is not going to stop deporting people." -- Elise Foley

Meanwhile, potential Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush went through the ancient campaign ritual of giving a foreign policy philosophy speech, to prove that he cares about foreign policy, and ancient rituals. Did you notice that Jeb Bush has the same last name as another president with a foreign policy? Because this was the week that every political reporter finally noticed that.

"It's weird because we come to this point and then we start talking about 'Oh, it's the so-and-so doctrine.' I was looking for signs of a 'Jeb Doctrine' and not a 'Bush Doctrine,' and I didn't see much distinctions." -- Jason Linkins

Finally, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been having what we are told are world-historical chitchats with people like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and current Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen. What do these meetings augur? Well, none of us were present at the meetings, so we'll do what media experts call "guessing."

"I think that sometimes Clinton's people will say, 'Look, they aren't that far away on most policy issues,' and to some extent that's true, but actually the rhetoric kind of does matter in a political campaign. ... Hillary Clinton is just not that good at talking populist." -- Zach Carter

* * *

"So, That Happened" is available on iTunes. We've been working to create an eclectic and informative panel show that's constantly evolving, a show that's as in touch with the top stories of the week as it is with important stories that go underreported. We'll be here on a weekly basis, bringing you the goods.

Never miss an episode: Subscribe to "So, That Happened" on iTunes, and if you like what you hear, please leave a review. We also encourage you to check out other HuffPost Podcasts: HuffPost Comedy's "Too Long; Didn't Listen," the HuffPost Weird News Podcast, HuffPost Politics' "Drinking and Talking," HuffPost Live's "Fine Print" and HuffPost Entertainment's Podcast.

This podcast was edited by Ibrahim Balkhy and engineered by Brad Shannon, with assistance from Christine Conetta and Adriana Usero.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience!]]>Harry Reid Hires Longtime Labor Ally As Economic Staffertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-20T15:59:51-05:002015-02-20T16:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
Doneski will be the top tax policy expert on Reid's staff and will be involved in most economic issues, a Reid aide said.

"It's great news," said Bill Samuel, top lobbyist at the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of labor unions. "And further proof that Senator Reid intends to take his fight for a progressive agenda to the next level."

Doneski's ties to unions date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when she worked with Samuel and current AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka at United Mine Workers, where they organized strikes to secure health care benefits for miners.

She spent several years working as top staffer on the Senate Commerce Committee under Rockefeller, who retired in January. In her new role, she'll replace Cathy Koch, who had worked as a lobbyist with General Electric and served as a Senate Finance Committee staffer under Max Baucus prior to joining Reid's office in 2013.

Reid has been recruiting progressives into the Democratic leadership since the party's losses in the 2014 mid-term election, most notably creating a new leadership post for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), designed to reinforce liberal positions on economic policy in top Democratic ranks.]]>Top Democrat Pushes Back On Expanding Obama's Trade Powerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-20T12:54:26-05:002015-02-20T13:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
As the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Wyden is the party's point-man on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a controversial free trade pact the Obama administration is negotiating with 11 other Pacific nations. President Barack Obama and Republican leaders broadly support the deal, saying it will expand economic growth. But many Democrats in Congress and liberal organizations oppose it, concerned that it could exacerbate income inequality, undermine key regulations and reward regimes that abuse human rights.

The deal is also not popular among Democratic voters. On Thursday, the liberal group Democracy for America released a Public Policy Polling survey that found significant discontent with the TPP deal in Wyden's home state of Oregon. When Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced a hearing on tariff standards early Friday, Wyden's office responded with a statement saying it cannot support even holding a policy hearing on trade issues, given the current state of negotiations.

"Today’s hearing announcement is premature," Wyden spokesman Keith Chu said in the statement. "There is no agreement on Trade Promotion Authority, or other aspects of the legislative trade agenda more broadly. Sen. Wyden is continuing to fight for more transparency, more oversight and provisions to ensure American workers come first in our trade policy."

Trade Promotion Authority -- or "fast-track," as it is also known -- would strip Congress of its ability to amend any trade agreement inked by the Obama administration. Every president since Richard Nixon has enjoyed such powers, but the authority has become increasingly controversial since the Clinton years. While many conservative activists oppose TPA, Republican leaders, including House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), support it.

"TPA is not granting authority to an executive branch," Ryan told reporters last week. "TPA is Congress asserting its authority in the early stages of a trade negotiation, telling the [administration] what a trade bill needs to look like, what are the guidelines and how they have to continually consult with the legislature throughout the entire process."

TPP talks are not in their "early stages," however. Obama has been pursuing the pact for years, and U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman says the deal is close to being finalized. Congress has not yet voted on a fast-track bill presenting negotiation instructions.

Many members of Congress are frustrated that talks thus far have not reflected their concerns. On Thursday, five co-chairs of the LGBT caucus sent Obama a letter expressing dismay at the administration's inclusion of Brunei in the negotiations, as that the regime is implementing a Sharia penal code that punishes LGBT people with execution by stoning. Nearly 18 months ago, 119 House members and 10 senators raised similar objections. In a January Senate Finance Committee hearing, both Republicans and Democrats lamented that the Obama administration had not pursued TPP terms to curb currency manipulation, despite years of input from lawmakers.

TPP likely cannot pass without fast-track authority. Since the Finance Committee has jurisdiction over trade policy, Wyden, more than any other Democrat, holds sway over what will be included in a fast-track bill, and ultimately whether the TPP can clear the Senate.

Sabrina Siddiqui contributed reporting.]]>Obama's Trade Deal Rewards A Brutally Anti-Gay Dictator -- And LGBT Lawmakers Are Not Pleasedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-19T19:39:53-05:002015-02-20T05:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
In a letter to President Barack Obama, five co-chairs of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus -- Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) -- posed sharp questions about why countries that promote the execution or imprisonment of gay people should be granted trade perks from the United States. Brunei recently imposed a Sharia penal system punishing gay sex with execution, and Malaysian law allows LGBT people to be caned and imprisoned for up to 20 years.

"Brunei continues to move forward with full implementation of a strict penal code mandating the stoning to death of LGBT citizens; similarly, Malaysia has not taken action to end its persecution of LGBT individuals," the letter reads. "Despite these abuses, the Administration continues to include them in negotiations around the TPP and lists them as intended signatories to the trade agreement."

In his State of the Union address in January, Obama said the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the administration is negotiating would present an opportunity for the U.S. to isolate the economic power of China and raise labor and human rights standards abroad. But the administration has brushed off explicit objections from Congress over human rights in Brunei for more than 18 months. Last year, 129 lawmakers signed a letter to the president raising concerns about that nation's inclusion in the TPP -- a major free trade pact with 11 other Pacific nations. No progress has been made with Brunei on its Sharia penal code since.

"The Administration shares the serious concerns about the new Sharia penal code, which is in the process of being implemented. We have been working closely with the State Department in communicating the strong concerns of both the Administration and Congress to the Bruneian government," the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative told HuffPost in an email. "In meetings with senior Bruneian government officials, we have made clear that protecting human rights -– including the rights of LGBT individuals, women, and religious minorities -– is a core U.S. value and a foreign policy priority."

Nevertheless, Brunei remains part of the negotiations, and USTR declined to say whether gay rights issues had been raised in TPP talks.

"We are dealing with countries that are challenging in TPP," Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said in a January hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, emphasizing, "Brunei, where the LGBT community has legitimate human rights concerns."

TPP supporters contend the agreement will boost economic growth. Its detractors say they worry it will undermine key regulations, exacerbate income inequality and reward human rights abusers.
Wednesday's letter highlighted the Obama administration's broad commitment to global LGBT rights, quoting both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, but said its actions on TPP undermine its stated principles.

"We urge you to bring consistency to the Administration’s foreign and trade policy," the letter reads. "The LGBT community looks to your Administration to fight for human rights across the globe and we hope you will continue this record of equality by removing Brunei and Malaysia from the TPP if they neglect to address these abuses."

Obama is seeking so-called fast-track authority from Congress, which would strip the legislative branch of the power to amend trade agreements negotiated by the administration. Most experts believe that TPP will not be approved without the authority.

Read the full letter here.
]]>Elizabeth Warren And Sherrod Brown Fight Fed Audit, Foreclosure Transparencytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-17T16:17:35-05:002015-02-17T18:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/a bill authored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to audit both the Federal Reserve's monetary policy operations and millions of foreclosures. Their aversion could doom any chance for public transparency surrounding the widespread abuse that banks deployed against homeowners in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her fellow financial reform advocate, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, have come out against Paul's proposal, which would for the first time provide a public accounting of the central bank's monetary policy maneuvers and its transactions with foreign central banks.

"Sen. Brown has supported recent actions that have brought historic levels of transparency to the Federal Reserve," spokeswoman Meghan Dubyak told The Huffington Post. "But he does not see how this legislation will benefit working Americans."

Warren and Brown insist they're on board with more transparency in the Fed's regulatory operations, but they're drawing the line at monetary policy.

"I oppose the current version of this bill because it promotes congressional meddling in the Fed’s monetary policy decisions, which risks politicizing those decisions and may have dangerous implications for financial stability and the health of the global economy," Warren said in a statement provided to HuffPost.

Other liberal financial commentators have been more blunt. Both The New York Times' Paul Krugman and the Roosevelt Institute's Mike Konczal have argued that Paul's Fed audit would empower kooky ideas about monetary policy -- particularly those of Paul himself -- and could ultimately damage the economy. Paul and plenty of other Republicans spent years warning that severe inflation was right around the corner. It never materialized, and many liberal economic experts believe that giving those voices new information about the Fed's monetary policy activities will only make it harder for the Fed to do its job.

Still, this idea of "political independence" is difficult to reconcile with basic principles of democratic accountability. It's also a distortion of the concept underlying the 1913 law that created the Fed.

"That independence is of course independence from the executive branch," University of Texas economist James Galbraith testified at a House hearing in 2009. "It is not and cannot be independence from the Congress itself. The Federal Reserve may be delegated certain functions by the Congress, but the Congress can always choose to hold it accountable … It's a legal independence of a kind that other regulatory institutions have had over the course of our history. It's not an independence which is specific to monetary policy per se."

The Fed is the world's most powerful economic institution, and its monetary policy operations are its strongest tools, setting interest rates that have tremendous influence over U.S. growth, inflation and the prices of key assets. The Fed's arrangements with foreign central banks and governments even give it a significant role in foreign policy. Yet despite its vast political reach, the Fed is far less accountable to the democratic process than other policy-setting agencies in the American government.

While the Fed's Board of Governors, based in Washington, D.C., is a public agency, the central bank's 12 regional branches are private-sector entities. Two-thirds of the directors of each regional branch are selected by commercial banks in the region, and many of those directors help select the presidents of each branch. Many of these regional presidents, in turn, play a role in setting monetary policy alongside the Board of Governors.

There have always been political dimensions to the Fed's activities. During the financial crisis, Ben Bernanke, then Federal Reserve chairman, and Tim Geithner, then president of the New York Fed, worked closely with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on various bailout activities, with Bernanke even helping sell Congress on a $700 billion bailout bill.

Regional Fed Presidents, meanwhile, have never been immune to political thinking. Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher ran for Senate as a Democrat before joining the Clinton administration as a trade official. San Francisco Fed President John C. Williams has been a career Fed economist, but also served as senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton. Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota signed a petition organized by the libertarian Cato Institute opposing President Barack Obama's stimulus plan a few months before he took office.

"I don't understand progressives', like Senator Elizabeth Warren, opposition to the idea of legislation to audit the Fed," one aide to Paul told HuffPost. "Some Democrat opposition seems more partisan than principled."

Few White House officials see Warren as an administration lapdog, particularly after she torpedoed Obama's recent Treasury nominee, Antonio Weiss, and led a revolt against a December budget deal blessed by Obama.

But securing Democratic votes will be difficult for Paul as he eyes a presidential run, and he will need at least a handful of votes from across the aisle if his bill is to overcome a filibuster. Both Brown and Warren had represented opportunities for Paul to pick up multiple Democratic votes -- Brown because of his power over other senators on the banking committee, and Warren because of her influence over the progressive wing of the party.

Progressives and Republicans have managed to find common ground on central bank transparency in the past. In 2009, both Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) worked with Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Sen. Paul's father, to audit the Fed's emergency lending operations during the financial crisis. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law requires public disclosure of any future Fed bailouts of the banking system, and most of the central bank's activity is already subject to regular auditing. Every time more transparency is proposed, Fed officials warn that monetary policy will be undermined by political interference -- although such transparency has never resulted in calamity.

The Fed has also (successfully) fought to prevent the public disclosure of records that detail widespread foreclosure abuses by big banks. Those documents underpinned a major 2012 settlement with the nation's largest banks, albeit one that ultimately provided very limited relief to victims.

Warren herself called on the Fed to release this information in 2013, castigating both the Fed and the Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

"I just want to make sure I get this straight," Warren said at the time. "Families get pennies on the dollar in this settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the bank’s activities... And you now know individual cases where the banks violated the law, and you're not going to tell the homeowners?"

Sen. Paul agreed to include a public audit of the foreclosure files in his bill to audit the Fed's monetary policy activity during negotiations with Democrats during the last session of Congress. The current bill, which is identical to the previous version, has 30 co-sponsors, only one of whom, Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, is a Democrat.

Read the full bill here.]]>So That Happened: Obama Asks Congress If It's Okay That He Started Fighting ISIStag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-14T07:30:16-05:002015-02-18T09:59:02-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/So, that happened: This week, America's ongoing battle with the Islamic State reached a new stage, specifically that stage where the president finally gets around to asking Congress if it's okay with them that he started a war six months ago. HuffPost's Jen Bendery joins us to give us the skinny on the latest edition of warmaking as a legislative farce.

"Congress is in this place where, as one senator told me this week, they like to beat their chests and say 'We're the ones who control war authorization. It's the constitutional right of Congress to do this. We're the ones. We have the power. But ... we don't really want to do it. So, Obama did this. This is Obama's war.'" -- Jen Bendery

Meanwhile, closer to home, we have governors behaving badly: Sam Brownback of Kansas wants gays to experience workplace discrimination. Wisconsin's Scott Walker isn't sure he has the guts to talk about middle school science. And have you heard about all the nonsense that just brought about the resignation of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber? We run down the nonsense.

"It's been a weird uptick this week in governors kind of cold f*cking up left and right. Right?" -- Jason Linkins

Finally, famous media people are leaving their famous media jobs. But did they jump, or were they pushed?

"Brian Williams -- and this is true for most news celebrities -- he's only kind of famous. The only people who know who he is are old. He is on the "Nightly News." Nobody watches that except for people over 65, so he's not even a real celebrity." -- Zach Carter

* * *

We're very happy to let you know that "So, That Happened" is available on iTunes. We've been working to create an eclectic and informative panel show that's constantly evolving, a show that's as in touch with the top stories of the week as it is with important stories that go underreported. We'll be here on a weekly basis, bringing you the goods.

Never miss an episode: Subscribe to "So, That Happened" on iTunes, and if you like what you hear, please leave a review. We also encourage you to check out other HuffPost podcasts: HuffPost Comedy's "Too Long; Didn't Listen," HuffPost Politics' "Drinking & Talking," HuffPost Live's "Fine Print," the HuffPost Weird News podcast and the HuffPost Entertainment podcast.

This podcast was edited by Ibrahim Balkhy and engineered by Brad Shannon, with assistance from Christine Conetta, Chris Gentilviso and Adriana Usero.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience!]]>Bride Of Benghazi: GOP Opens New Scandal Circus Over Mortgage Settlementstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-12T21:30:09-05:002015-02-13T02:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
During a hearing that lasted roughly two hours, Republicans repeatedly suggested that the Department of Justice was illegally funneling money to "activist groups" using sham transactions embedded in legal settlements with two big banks.

The event was essentially an exercise in dog-whistling to unsavory elements of the GOP base. In his opening statement, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) ominously name-checked both the defunct ACORN and the Hispanic civil rights advocacy group La Raza. One expert witness Republicans called to testify is a filmmaker currently collaborating with an anti-Islam conspiracy theory author on a movie that will purportedly show "how the government's crusade against alleged lending racism" caused the financial crisis.

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) said he was worried "someone at Justice, and as you said -- at the highest levels -- is picking and choosing who will get this money."

"It looks and smells a little bit like a slush fund," said freshman Rep. David Trott (R-Mich.), who built a personal fortune running a "foreclosure mill" law firm to help banks evict borrowers.

In other words, Republicans think President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have concocted a big, covert scam to help minorities.

If Trott is right, the Justice Department is running a pretty lousy slush fund. So far, no money has flowed out the door to any activist groups. And the two banks involved -- Citigroup and Bank of America -- haven't even figured out which organizations will get money.

Republicans are raising a ruckus over a provision included in DOJ fraud settlements with both banks over widespread misdeeds in the mortgage securities market in the years leading up to the financial crisis. Under the agreements, banks must contribute a combined $30 million -- well under 1 percent of the multi-billion-dollar fine -- to mortgage counseling agencies.

How convenient, Goodlatte argued, that DOJ required banks to pay these groups after Congress explicitly cut their funding. He didn't explain why Congress decided to slash the budget for mortgage counseling amid a foreclosure epidemic.

City University of New York law professor Alan White and DOJ's Geoffrey Graber both said counseling funds were critical for ensuring any actual consumer mortgage relief went to good use. Banks have inked settlement after settlement with various federal agencies because their mortgage practices have been not only terrible, but terribly confusing. Navigating the system without a qualified mortgage counselor is effectively impossible -- and frequently fruitless -- even for those with expert guidance. Banks typically will not work with troubled borrowers who are not receiving counseling. If the settlements work, these groups -- which are overseen by the Department of Housing and Urban Development -- will have a lot more to do.

While Citi and BofA do, in fact, have to pay money to counseling groups, DOJ says it doesn't actually direct those payments. The department allows banks to select any organization approved by HUD. The list includes thousands of nonprofits, including religious groups.

Paul Larkin of the Heritage Foundation argued that the settlements circumvented the constitutional role of Congress to appropriate funds, saying DOJ had engaged in "sham transactions" by requiring banks to contribute money to counseling groups, instead of to the government itself, which would have been barred from doing so. White said state regulators have inked similar provisions. It is common in fraud settlements for regulators to require wrongdoers to make restitution with consumers.

Republicans have repeatedly handed the Obama administration favors by highlighting a substantive policy problem, then making wild, unfounded accusations of wrongdoing. There are genuine reasons to question the U.S. military action in Libya, for example. But the GOP latched onto Benghazi conspiracy theories alleging a political cover-up to steal the 2012 election that even the Republicans' own report on the matter has now rejected.

Similarly, the Obama administration's Wall Street accountability record is remarkably weak. DOJ has declined to prosecute employees of the biggest banks for misdeeds that led to the crisis, and for malfeasance in the years that followed. Obama's current attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch, inked a meager settlement with HSBC in 2013 over allegations of laundering drug money, but recent reports suggest the bank was embroiled in massive simultaneous tax evasion maneuvers that U.S. authorities missed. The first major round of mortgage settlements with big banks was poorly designed, and helped a paltry number of borrowers, despite misleadingly large dollar figures.

All of these shortcomings would be legitimate matters for GOP oversight. But instead of targeting Obama administration coziness with big banks, Republicans have locked in on community groups that help minorities.

In November, Goodlatte and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) sent a letter to Holder demanding a trove of communications surrounding the settlements.

"The terms in the Justice Department's two latest settlements look less like consumer relief and more like a scheme to funnel money to politically favored special interest groups," reads the letter, which singles out La Raza.

Although DOJ responded to the Goodlatte-Hensarling letter in January, it has not yet turned over internal emails sought by the Republicans.

"You can expect that this will escalate if you do not provide the documentation that we requested two months ago," Goodlatte told DOJ's Geoffrey Graber, a deputy associate attorney general, at Thursday's hearing.

CORRECTION: An earlier version misidentified Rep. David Trott's party affiliation. He is a Republican.]]>House GOP Rams Through 2 New Deregulation Billstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//2015-02-05T18:26:47-05:002015-02-06T11:59:01-05:00Zach Carterhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/zach-carter/
The first bill, passed Wednesday, rejuvenates the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, shepherded through Congress by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The 20-year-old legislation imposed a host of cost-benefit standards on federal regulators, including a requirement that they consider the costs that new rules might impose on state and local governments. Wednesday's GOP bill adds a new dimension to that law by allowing those detailed regulatory calculations to be challenged in federal court -- opening every stage of analysis to litigation that may make it nearly impossible for agencies to write and implement rules.

The bill is funded by a $32 million cut to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the agency created by President Barack Obama's 2010 Wall Street reform bill to crack down on predatory lending, mortgage abuses and unscrupulous credit card companies .

"Both of these bills are part of an attack on the entire regulatory state," said Marcus Stanley, policy director at Americans for Financial Reform. "They're designed to make it impossible for agencies to function."

Regulatory cost-benefit analyses are inherently vulnerable to challenge. The long-term benefits of regulations are often difficult to quantify, while the costs can be immediate and straightforward. The calculations can be even more complex with public health and safety issues, where the value of human lives must be weighed against corporate costs.

Regulators had already been required to perform economic impact analyses and other calculations of costs and benefits for years before Gingrich began working to add new layers of red tape during the 1990s. The issue had largely been dormant in the decade between Gingrich's departure from Congress and Obama's inauguration, until conservative power lawyer Eugene Scalia -- son of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia -- began a series of challenges to financial regulations based on cost-benefit requirements.

Scalia's success in overturning new rules that Congress directed regulators to write under the Dodd-Frank Act has made additional cost-benefit legislation a top priority for Republicans in Congress. After passing the Gingrich bill update on Wednesday, the GOP pushed through another piece of legislation -- its third of 2015 -- adding additional cost-benefit calculations to the regulatory workload. That bill garnered 19 Democratic yeas.

The support from some Democrats is likely due to the bill's purported emphasis on small businesses. Under the legislation, regulators must now perform an analysis of the total "indirect effect" effect of any new rule on small firms, including any "effects on revenue."

These terms are undefined by the bill, which would leave rules open to an extraordinary array of challenges, since almost any significant rule has some follow-on effect at some point on smaller businesses. When financial regulators propose tighter rules on big banks, for instance, their lobbyists frequently make the claim that cracking down on Wall Street recklessness will end up limiting investment in Main Street firms.

"These votes make clear that the House GOP is only interested in helping small businesses and working families through trickle-down deregulation," said Amit Narang, regulatory policy advocate for Public Citizen. "It's no accident these bills are riddled with big business loopholes."

Neither bill is likely to be enacted as standalone legislation, since Obama opposes both measures and this week's votes demonstrated that Republicans do not have enough Democratic support to override a veto. Nevertheless, GOP leaders may try to tuck either or both bills into a broader government funding bill or legislation to raise the debt limit -- arenas in which Obama has demonstrated a willingness to let Republican priorities be enacted.]]>